Jorrorfest '07: The Freakmaker

Just in time for Halloween I found myself on a horror movie kick, which I have cleverly dubbed Jefe's Jorrorfest (I just now thought of that). Not surprisingly, I feel the need to talk about it. Which is why it is perfect for this or any other blog--you don't care and I assume that you do.
In the spirit of the event, I have instructed The Captain (pictured, at right) to peer menacingly into my window, like he's doing right now--only with a greater sense of foreboding, through October 31.
I won't get into the first two films that I've watched during Jefe's Jorrorfest, except to say that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a brilliant, disturbing and sometimes hilarious horror masterpiece, and that Halloween somehow seems like a cliché nowadays, if only because it has inspired so many others. I could go on at great length about each, but I've got another lesser known "classic" to discuss.

For the third installment of the Jorrorfest I decided to take a chance on 1974's The Freakmaker (a.k.a. The Mutations, and later, Dr. of Evil). My initial attraction to The Freakmaker was the 1970s B-movie kitsch factor. When I discovered that director Jack Cardiff was inspired by Tod Browning's 1932 classic, Freaks, and cast real sideshow “freaks” as the films sideshow freaks, I was sold.
Oddly enough, I unwittingly chose to view back-to-back Donald Pleasance films! This might be a stretch, but the man is like the Vincent Price of the 1970s. The intensity of Dr. Sam Loomis in Halloween, the cold, calculating evil of Professor Nolter set the bar for character actors of the genre. Much like Price, he adds credibility where there should be none.
About the movie itself. Don't let the first half of the movie fool you. It sucks--bad. It is a whirlwind of polyester plaid leisure suits, mock turtlenecks and dialogue that is as snappy as cheese-flavored wood. I turned it off and was about to send it back. Luckily I decided to give it another shot and found found it strangely endearing.

Basically what you have are two plots that are unnaturally fused together like half-plant half-man experiments of the evil Dr. Nolter (Pleasance), whose plan is to make a plant-human hybrid. As it is with plants and humans, and the two parts of this movie, both are fine by themselves.
The trouble starts when Dr. Nolter, who teaches at an esteemed English university, enlists the help of the grotesque giant Mr. Lynch (Tom Baker), the feared leader of a traveling circus sideshow on the outskirts of town. Lynch nabs unwitting college students who are coincidentally enrolled in one of the professor’s classes. The absent-minded professor then fails to recognize them, even as they lie naked (obligatory gratuitous breasts) on an operating table in his secret laboratory.
Mr. Lynch and the rest of the freaks are members of a traveling circus sideshow that is kind of a freak-owned co-op (ring a bell?) that acts as both a holding cell for Dr. Nolter’s unwitting victims and as a clearing house for his horribly failed experiments.

From there it just gets weird, not so much because of brilliant plot twists, although the story’s gaping holes will keep you guessing. Of interest is the seemingly candid acting of sideshow people, who give you the only characters in The Freakmaker who elicit any sympathy. The rest of the characters are pretty much douches. Aside from that, it’s all rabbit-eating plants, re-animating laser beams, pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, cannibalistic human Venus flytraps, freak-on-prostitute action (they use the “L” word), and deadly, knife-throwing-freak-and-vicious-dog-on-freak revenge killing. German sexpot Hedi (Julie Ege) sums The Freakmaker with horrifying accuracy as she cries out “Ziss is like a bad trip or zomesing!”

A bad trip indeed.